Critical Youth Participatory Action Research: Ideology, Consciousness, and Praxis

Critical youth participatory action research (YPAR) is emerging as a meaningful exercise for young people, researchers, and educators to collaborate in pedagogical social change efforts. Youth and adult co-researchers have both referred to critical YPAR as a “transformative” experience. But what constitutes “transformative” within the everyday realities of capitalist social relations? Drawing upon the conceptual tools of anti-racist Marxist feminists, I argue that critical YPAR generates consciousness and praxis within the mode of ideology, where the depth of our social-material relations are obscured in the appearances of everyday life. Within this ideology, participants in critical YPAR work demonstrate a consciousness about the individual as a site and solution for social change, and produce a praxis concentrated on increasing young people’s access to research and higher education. Ultimately, critical YPAR emerges as useful in helping young people and their adult allies to creatively manage or reform, rather than transform, capitalist social relations.M.A